All posts by Louis Fowler

Thriller

The Crying Game (1992)

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The Crying Game is a well-directed, well-scripted, taut thriller about an Irish Republican Army member who, after a hostage situation ends tragically, tries to regain his foothold in society. He meets a slender chanteuse at a nightclub, and after developing feelings for her, it turns out — spoiler — the woman is, as director Neil Jordan characterized her, “a transvestite and a gay man.”

You would think that character, especially in Jordan’s able hands, would be a memorable role displaying the hope, loss and salvation the film deserves. But you forget this was released in 1992, and even worse, you’re from Oklahoma.

So, in case you don’t remember, the movie had a foreplay scene where — spoiler — Dil (Jaye Davidson) had a full-frontal nude shot, and everyone lost their damn mind. Thank God we didn’t have the internet at the time!

When The Crying Game came out, it became the weak punchline to the year’s dirtiest, lamest jokes, with everyone from Bible-beating preachers to wacky morning disc jockeys getting in on the barbed fun, upholding their own homophobia and sliding us back a few years.

My own parents banned it in our house, in case it turned me gay. I finally viewed it, thanks to the new Criterion edition. While I’m not gay yet, the movie is not only a queer milestone, but a damn good crime film as well.

The IRA kidnaps a soldier on leave (Forest Whitaker) and stores him blindfolded in a greenhouse. Fergus (Stephen Rea) brings him food and slowly develops a bond with him, something he shouldn’t be doing. The soldier tells Fergus about his lover, Dil, and, after his hostage is killed, Fergus breaks from the IRA, moves to London, finds Dil and begins a semi-romance with her. After a few weeks, with Fergus becoming more amenable to his situation, his old IRA buddies come looking for him, with Dil caught in a trap.

Encountering conventions of homoerotic masculinity as well as window-rattling domestic terrorism, the movie defies conventions, both sexual and suspenseful. Both Rea and Davidson have a sweet romance despite the world around them and the violence they encounter.

I truly love Jordan’s previous work like The Company of Wolves and especially Mona Lisa, but with The Crying Game — great title track from Boy George, by the way — he made a film about difficult choices and the will to own up to them and, even more so, to embrace them.

The Crying Game is still a controversial title in Oklahoma, but the rest of the world has moved on. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Kitchen Sink

The Trip (1967)

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WTF

Growing up, I never drank alcohol or took drugs, mostly because of an unwavering superiority complex that tended to rub people the wrong way, alienating them and leading me to a lifetime of hardship, strife and loneliness.

But if I had to do an addictive substance, I probably would do acid.

I mean, from what I’ve heard from classroom film strips, after-school specials and related docudramas, it’s a total carnival freakshow where the sights, smells and other sensory factors create a real horror vibe, drudging up the demons of your mind so you can, typically, cast yourself out a fifth-story window. That sounds kind of fun …

Even though I’m far too old now for drug-fueled shenanigans, 1967’s The Trip is supposedly a based-on-real-life excursion to the hallucinogenic world, but with the MPAA on hand to regulate everything we’re about to see … or not see. Written by pre-Chinatown Jack Nicholson, directed by pre-New World Pictures Roger Corman and starring a pre-Easy Rider Peter Fonda, it’s automatically a cinematic exploitation beatdown of low-budget proportions.

The Trip finds the somewhat tanned Fonda as successful commercial director Paul. He’s in the doldrums of ’60s depression from a somewhat-bitter Hollywood divorce, so friend-with-weed-is-a-friend-indeed John (Bruce Dern) takes him to a swingin’ bachelor pad — or, if you’re so inclined, a psychedelic drug den to take some primo stuff, man.

As some trippy sitars begin to play, Paul takes some blotter-paper LSD and slowly starts to float downstream. Here, the movie takes on the approximation of what a trip “actually” feels like, starting from the blending of colors, shapes and strobing dots, man, to on-location shots of rock-climbing, cliff-diving and love-making to buxom women on said rocks.

On his journey, Paul encounters hooded figures, spooky witches, go-go dancers and, of course, the occasional midget. There’s a haunted house, peeling faces, burial shroud, a big-haired woman and campy Mexican music on the soundtrack. And don’t forget the old-time carousel, paranoid delusions about chairs and Dennis Hopper doing his comedic (?) Church of Satan routine with bloodstained pictures on LBJ on the wall.

As his trip comes down — and as the audience loses patience — Paul goes on a rampage though the Sunset Strip, meeting various dancers at a “happening,” laundromat patrons just trying to do their laundry and a real menacing tiger on black velvet that somehow terrorizes him into sobriety.

Hmmm … maybe I don’t want to try acid?

Sure, Fonda, Dern and Hopper are/were great actors after — and in spite of — The Trip, but it’s on par with a Reefer Madness scare film: great to take a toke, a hit or a dose to, but after 30 minutes, you’ll be reaching for the remote and down a box of Ding-Dongs. Or, if you’re really tripping balls, a tentacle will come out your slimy sternum to change the mellow groove-box, man, and take you to the other side.

In the end, the movie is a bum Trip. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Action

Ms .45 (1981)

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I admit I hadn’t seen the rape-revenge parable Ms .45, mostly because it has far too much brutal rape for my decidedly non-rapey tastes. With the new Arrow Blu-ray, I finally gave it a try and, well, it’s definitely one of the scroungiest, scummiest, rape-filled movies of all time. It scars me every time I close my eyes.

But I now understand why it’s one of the most feminist-coded flicks of all time, even if it didn’t mean to be.

With a truly skeevy atmosphere behind a low-rent, disco-funk soundtrack, mute New Yorker Thana (Zoë Tamerlis, Special Effects) is a low-level seamstress who, on her way home from picking up groceries, is raped by a nameless vagrant … and then, mere minutes later, again raped by a burglar. She bashes the burglar with an iron and, thankfully, kills him. Finding his gun among the debris, she becomes what the alternate title suggest: an Angel of Vengeance.

Exacting her bloody will, the traumatized Thana shoots a “Noo Yawk” guy point-blank in the head, in glorious color. Throughout the next couple of days, she shoots a sleazy pick-up artist, a stereotypical pimp wanting his money, and the total cast of The Warriors coming out to play (on their off-time) and getting killed for their troubles.

In the stunning climax, after lovingly kissing bullets as a preamble to a massacre, Thana lays waste to all the men at the work party, all to an ominously post-punk beat and while dressed as a nun. Man, there’s no way around it: The movie is about a woman who justifiably slaughters half of the most chauvinistic section of New York City proper, with a little left over for the outer boroughs. Where were these copycat murders?

Much like the big city it skewers, it’s an abrasive and downright abusive portrayal of a woman at the end of her noose, and we’re in her bloodstained way. A cloistered holy warrior in a world of unchecked perversion and wanton lust, Ms .45 is the type of film that should be shown to males on their 13th birthday with a chemical-castration prescription as a caustic topper. It’s the least we can do!

I’m glad I saw Ms .45, but I feel like I must volunteer at a battered women’s shelter or something, because it gave me feelings I must deal with — and soon. At least let me pay for your bullets, Zoë! —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Masters of the Universe (1987)

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While people re-evaluate their opinions of Masters of the Universe due to the new movie, I’ve always liked the property on-whole — not just the 1987 filmic adaptation, but the cartoons and toy line, too.

That being said, it’s been around 40 years since I last saw the movie, on broadcast television one afternoon because my parents wouldn’t pay for first-run movies, dollar movies, premium cable or, even worse, basic cable. Yeah, for many years, we were a broadcast-only family and, consequently, I missed out of most of the MOTU studio Cannon Group filmography. Chuck Norris be damned!

I remember it being “all right” for what it was. Which was okay, because most adaptations at the time were very fast and loose and needed serious legroom to stretch out their fantastical concepts. You dealt with it. In preparation for the 2026 remake, I rewatched the original and, I gotta say, with all the limitations like budget constraints and unworkable screenplay, it’s actually pretty good for what it was.

The movie starts with a Superman-like title crawl that prepares us for Skeletor (Frank Langella) and his baddies to take the mythical wasteland of Eternia. The only thing that can stop them is a cadre of cannon-fodder soldiers, allies like Teela and Man-at-Arms, and, of course, muscular himbo He-Man (Dolph Lundgren).

During the battle, they find li’l Gwildor (li’l Billy Barty) and his fantastical tool to travel though strange dimensions and the like. With Skeletor on their brawny tails, they go through the machine and accidently find themselves in … a fried-chicken restaurant in Anytown, U.S.A.

Here is where most people have a problem with the movie: He-Man is given a backseat to his own movie to Courteney Cox and her boring boyfriend and their relationship problems, most of which stem from her wanting to leave to the big city after the death of her parents.

During a tearful moment at their grave, Courteney and said boyfriend find the dimension-hopping instrument and naturally decide it’s a new Japanese synthesizer to fiddle with. This sends out a beacon to He-Man, but also to Skeletor, sadly. Monitored chaos ensues, with Skeletor marching down city streets as he gives He-Man laser-lashes on his bare bottom. Or something like that.

The movie doesn’t really break new cinematic ground, but the characterizations of both He-Man and Skeletor are virtually spot-on. I like these characters and even though the costumes aren’t exactly right, they work. Even Teela, Man-at-Arms, Evil Lyn and the barrage of low-rent, bargain-basement, completely original villains (like Lizard Man, Eyepatch Man and Guy with Old Lady Hair) are fine for the material. Even li’l Gwildor.

No, the movie’s real problem is this: It’s soooooooo boring.

The characters — especially the humans — have no depth or meaning. Truthfully, I would have been good with the earthbound story if they had given us more than two dead parents, a depressive complex and a bucket of chicken to go.

I assume the new Masters of the Universe movie helps alleviate that, but surprisingly, it’s not doing well with movie critics or movie fans, with most saying it’s too faithful to the toys and cartoons.

By the power of Grayskull, what more do you want from me, Hollywood? —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The Apple (1980)

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Call me downright stupid, but I desperately want a big-budget version of Cannon Group’s 1980 anti-corporate, proto-surreal, biblically twinged, satanically dystopic, hard-rocking, soft sci-fi, neo-musical, The Apple, set in the distant year of … 1994.

That’s when I first heard about The Apple. Reading a snarky synopsis in a zine I can’t remember, I thought it was right up my weird alley. A decade later, I finally picked up a new copy at, can you believe it, the then-burgeoning Best Buy. Recently, selling old DVDs to Vintage Stock, I found this at the bottom of my collection and had to rewatch it. I truly liked it, more than I had in the past. Time heals all wounds, right?

The Apple uses the futuristic set designs of shopping centers, hotel lobbies and abandoned malls to create its 1994, where the spiritual fate of the world rests on the demonic visage of Mr. Boogalow (Vladek Sheybal), head of the music label BIM, which has its own theme song, “Do the BIM.”

Pre-American Idol, small-town Canuck kids Bibi (Catherine Mary Stewart) and Alphie (George Gilmour) appear on a futuristic talent program warbling the oh-so-syrupy “Universal Melody,” making them total superstars to the trend-swilling public. Well … one of them.

You see, Bibi is seduced by the voracious system, fully taken by the drugs, the sex and the unflattering costumes. Meanwhile, the virtuous Alphie eschews the whole system, writing protest songs nobody hears — probably the truest thing about this movie!

Something happens that makes the story even stranger: In between songs about how to “taste the apple” to make your dreams come true, Boogalow turns into Satan, small horns and gnashing teeth abound. Yikes!

Bibi becomes a total sellout in the period of two days. Although he’s tempted by the devil’s daughter (singing the sensuous, disco-fied come-on of “I’m coming … coming for you”), Alphie comes upon a hippie cult led by Mr. Topps (Joss Ackland), who is, to be sure, the Almighty.

As a matter of fact, Topps sings about a “child of love” and then, in his stately showroom-model Chrysler LeBaron, takes Bibi, Alphie and the rest of the commune to, I believe, Heaven. Praise be!

From its strained biblical allusions to Cannon’s low-budget way of depicting the apocalypse, The Apple is a PG-rated blend of Jesus Christ Superstar and Escape from New York. For a musical, the songs are the odd-man-out component; their lyrics are banal and the music substandard, but, I must admit, they’re also the biggest earworms I‘ve ever heard!

So, sure, the movie is pretty much “so bad it’s good” material, but perhaps it deserves more love — or, really, any love — so others can see what I can now see in The Apple.

And maybe we can start the campaign for a remake. Let’s all do the BIM! —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.